Many interesting presentations and people at LOTS, yesterday. A product, that caught my attention is PHPeppershop. Found by two students from the Hochschule Wintherthur, the company produces a GPLed e-commerce software for online shops, reportedly in use at over two thousand sites.
Their financing model is what interested me: They propose new features, estimate their costs and propose them on their website. If I am interested in that feature, I can subscribe as sponsor for it and they implement it as soon as the financing is secured. Sponsors have the rights to use the new features for three months before they are incorporated into the public release. So far they seem to implement all the features before they are fully financed, probably expecting the earn the money in the just-for-sponsors phase. In any case, this looks like an interesting financing model for open source software that is actually implemented in practice.
Posted by seefeld at February 19, 2004 16:59